I am with you.

In my opinion (and this is gonna be a bit long):
First, I am a liberal. BUT, I am fine with people who are following the law to own guns. I have fired guns. I got to shoot a sniper rifle and several other hand guns and a shot gun (not my fav) via a friend who was in the military. I had fun, it was at targets, in a remote area. I'd do it again! I'm not afraid of the gun owner who follows the law. But, they are not the ones who are going to go out and blow people away for no reason (reflecting on most of the recent gun violence). The gun laws are not equal across every state which is where the problem lies. I live in Cali. We have some of the toughest laws BUT we border Arizona and Nevada which are much more lenient. Are we allowed, as Cali residents, to go across the border and purchase guns or gun parts for certain types of weapons...NO! Do some people...YES! If we can come up with a unified set of laws across the entirety of the states I think this will help. Don't even get me started about what you can buy via the internet!
Second, FACTS! I will say it again, I am a liberal BUT...
Both sides(right and left) love to misinform. Many people just regurgitate bad statistics because they become infuriated by reading them and don't actually research just how truthful they really are. Here's an example I posted on FB because many of my friends were furious about the number of "school shootings" that took place just two months into last year (2018). These "stats" were posted by an ultra liberal group called Everytown and grossly misrepresented:

Most of us, myself included, hear school shooting and think Columbine (or similar). However, the term “school shooting” is also broad in definition; it also applies to a shooting near a school (Grade, High, or College level) and doesn’t differentiate if the school was closed or not and no students present. A list was generated, by an anti-gun advocacy group called Everytown For Gun Safety, who used this muddy description of school shootings to inflame people. Only one of these school shootings used an AR-15 type rifle, the other two were handguns. Here is a list of those 18 “school shootings” and their descriptions:

2018 U.S. school shootings as counted by Everytown
Date Place Details
Jan. 3 East Olive Elementary, St. Johns, Mich. Man committed suicide in parking lot. No other injuries.
(We found the building was not being used as a school, as East Olive had been shut down more than six months earlier.)
Jan. 4 New Start High, Seattle Unidentified shooter fired shots into building. No injuries.
Jan. 10 Grayson College, Denison, Texas Student unintentionally fired a bullet from gun legally possessed by an instructor that struck a wall. No injuries.
Jan. 10 Coronado Elementary, Sierra Vista, Ariz. Student committed suicide in bathroom. No other injuries.
Jan. 10 California State University, San Bernardino Gunshots, most likely fired from off campus, hit a campus building window. No injuries.
Jan. 15 Wiley College, Marshall, Texas Shots fired from car in parking lot, with one shot hitting window of residence hall. No injuries.
Jan. 20 Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, N.C. One student wounds another student during argument at sorority party.
Jan. 22 Italy High, Italy, Texas Student opens fire in cafeteria, wounding one student before firing at another student and missing. Gun used was a .380 handgun. (dallasnews.com)
Jan. 22 NET Charter High, Gentilly, La. Unknown person fired shots at students standing in parking lot. No injuries from gunshots.
Jan. 23 Marshall County High, Benton, Ky. 2 students left dead in mass shooting by student. More than a dozen students injured. Gun used was a hand gun – no model given, (nypost.com)
Jan. 25 Murphy High, Mobile, Ala. Student fired into the air outside school after argument in school. No injuries.
Jan. 26 Dearborn High, Dearborn, Mich. Individual ejected from game for fighting was shot at in parking lot. No injuries.
Jan. 31 Lincoln High, Philadelphia Man fatally wounded in fight in parking lot.
Feb. 1 Salvador B. Castro Middle, Los Angeles Student unintentionally fires gun in classroom, wounds two students.
Feb. 5 Oxon Hill High, Oxon Hill, Md. Student wounded in parking lot during apparent robbery.
Feb. 5 Harmony Learning K-12, Maplewood, Minn. Student pressed trigger on school liaison officer’s gun. No injuries.
Feb. 8 Metropolitan High, New York, N.Y. Student fired gun into floor in classroom. No injuries.
Feb. 14 Stoneman Douglas High, Parkland, Fla. Ex-student allegedly commits mass shooting; 17 deaths.
Gun used was an AR-15 rifle.

So, there are 18 incidents in which a gun was fired inside a school or on a former or current school property.
Three -- Italy, Texas, Kentucky and Florida -- were mass shootings.
But of the other shootings:
• Nine involved no deaths and no gunshot injuries.
• Two were suicides, with no other injuries (including the one at the closed school).
• Three were unintentional (although one caused injuries).
• One was an apparent robbery in progress.

Third (and Lastly), Buzz words. the words “mass shooting” have a broad meaning with 4 being the magic number most reporting agencies agree on. Many governmental agencies say a mass shooting is defined as 4 or more deaths while still some government offices and media claim a mass shooting is where there are four or more killed OR injured. Here is a list of MASS shootings featuring an AR-15 OR SIMILAR style rifle in the past 35 years:

*Here is a list of mass shootings in the U.S. that featured AR-15 STYLE rifles during the last 35 years, courtesy of the Stanford Geospatial Center and Stanford Libraries and USA TODAY research:

• • Feb. 24, 1984: Tyrone Mitchell, 28, used an AR-15, a Stoeger 12-gauge shotgun and a Winchester 12-gauge shotgun to kill two and wound 12 at 49th Street Elementary School in Los Angeles before killing himself.
  • Oct. 7, 2007: Tyler Peterson, 20, used an AR-15 to kill six and injure one at an apartment in Crandon, Wis., before killing himself.
  • June 20, 2012: James Eagan Holmes, 24, used an AR-15-style .223-caliber Smith and Wesson rifle with a 100-round magazine, a 12-gauge Remington shotgun and two .40-caliber Glock semi-automatic pistols to kill 12 and injure 58 at a movie theater in Aurora, Colo.
  • Dec. 14, 2012: Adam Lanza, 20, used an AR-15-style rifle, a .223-caliber Bushmaster, to kill 27 people — his mother, 20 students and six teachers — in Newtown, Conn., before killing himself.
  • June 7, 2013: John Zawahri, 23, used an AR-15-style .223-caliber rifle and a .44-caliber Remington revolver to kill five and injure three at a home in Santa Monica, Calif., before he was killed.
  • March 19, 2015: Justin Fowler, 24, used an AR-15 to kill one and injure two on a street in Little Water, N.M., before he was killed.
  • May 31, 2015: Jeffrey Scott Pitts, 36, used an AR-15 and .45-caliber handgun to kill two and injure two at a store in Conyers, Ga., before he was killed.
  • Oct. 31, 2015: Noah Jacob Harpham, 33, used an AR-15, a .357-caliber revolver and a 9mm semi-automatic pistol to kill three on a street in Colorado Springs, Colo., before he was killed.
  • Dec. 2, 2015: Syed Rizwyan Farook and Tashfeen Malik, 28 and 27, used two AR-15-style, .223-caliber Remington rifles and two 9 mm handguns to kill 14 and injure 21 at his workplace in San Bernardino, Calif., before they were killed.
  • June 12, 2016: Omar Mateen, 29, used an AR-15 style rifle (a Sig Sauer MCX), and a 9mm Glock semi-automatic pistol to kill 49 people and injure 50 at an Orlando nightclub before he was killed.
  • Oct. 1, 2017: Stephen Paddock, 64, used a stockpile of guns including an AR-15 to kill 58 people and injure hundreds at a music festival in Las Vegas before he killed himself.
  • Nov. 5, 2017: Devin Kelley, 26, used an AR-15 style Ruger rifle to kill 26 people at a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, before he was killed.
  • Feb. 14, 2018: Police say Nikolas Cruz, 19, used an AR-15-style rifle to kill at least 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla.

I can back you up on one point. i was unarmed when I got shot. I reacted fast and got the gun off the guy. Had I paused to get out a weapon, I'd had had two more holes in me.

Time for the US to grow up & get into this century.

Your compatriots need to take heed of this and lobby their congressmen and senators to vote for sensible amendments to your gun laws.